The Obama Economy – As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame. After five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth. (WSJ)

Obama Has No Mandate For Radicalism – The real Obama has stood up, and lived up to his ranking as the most left-wing member of the United States Senate. The president says he is gearing up for a fight on his budget. Good. Let’s give him one. (Patrick Buchanan)

Democratic Revolt May Slow Obama Agenda – Democratic Reps. Jim Matheson of Utah and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona have joined a quiet revolt in the House that could slow some of President Obama’s fast-moving priorities. The two are among 49 Democrats from congressional districts that backed Republican Sen. John McCain ’s 2008 presidential race and whose support for the Democratic majority’s progressive agenda is increasingly not assured. (Real Clear Politics)

A Moderate Manifesto – The Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once. (David Brooks)

Obama’s morning in America – If President Obama has his way on the budget, or most of it, history will write of three political revolutions in this country in a little less than a century—Roosevelt’s, Reagan’s and Obama’s. (The Week)

Is the Worst Yet to Come? – If you want to understand why, despite his popularity with the general public, Barack Obama is losing the confidence of Wall Street, all you really have to do is speak to his supporters on the Street. There are many, contradicting the long-held myth that the bankers, investors, and hedge-fund traders who inordinately profited during the past two-plus decades of unfettered capitalism don’t always vote as unfettered capitalists. But for all of that they can’t believe what they are witnessing: an economic agenda that is contradictory at best, and possibly reckless in its extreme. Policies that will certainly make a very bad situation even worse, and when things do get better, they will certainly not be better enough to compensate for the pain we are experiencing. (Charlie Gasparino)

More Than 8.3 Million U.S. Mortgages Are Under Water – That’s one in five mortgages (Bloomberg)

Barack Obama bets the farm in $4 trillion poker game – The President believes he can change US politics for a generation. If he’s wrong he could bankrupt the whole country. (Times Online)

A Global Retreat As Economies Dry Up – Singapore’s exports collapsed by a stunning 35 percent in January, mirroring much of the rest of Asia. The export boom here was tied to credit-fueled buying sprees in the United States that stopped abruptly and may take years to return, if ever. The scene in this port city — along with a glimpse inside two of its reeling neighbors in export-dependent Southeast Asia — illustrates the ebbing of a golden age of trade, innovation, wealth accumulation and poverty reduction through globalization. (Washington Post)

Wall Street on the Tundra – Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown. (Vanity Fair)